Greedy Goblin

Monday, April 7, 2014

Ripard's main issue

Ripard wrote a list of derailing nonsense side issues that people talk about to avoid talking about the main issue: "do you want this vile excuse for a human being and people like him playing our game and being part of our community?"

Yes, I do. Why? Because we also have a real life and these vile excuses of human beings are there. Erotica 1 and his cronies weren't banned from real life. Maybe he is your neighbor, your coworker or he is dating your 17 years old child. He is surely someone's neighbor, coworker and date. A CCP game ban doesn't change that.

You can't avoid meeting ones like him in real life. Now the big question is, where should one get his first experience with a "vile excuse for a human being"? I think a simulated environment where only pixels are at stake is a perfect place. You can always terminate any connection with such people in a game by logging out. If he wins, he only takes pixels from you.

I think the most important thing we can learn from MMOs is how to deal with unpleasant and useless people. Seeing the terribly underperforming "for fun" morons and slackers in games helped me a lot handling workplace performance issues or understanding why people end up homeless drunkards. Actually I think the best cure for socialist delusions is playing World of Warcraft battlegrounds and looking for raids. EVE on the other hand is perfect place to practice avoiding or fighting predators, scammers, exploiters. Meeting with a predator, someone who wants to hurt others for no reason is an unpleasant experience. But being able to recognize a predator can literally save your life one day.

There is a reason why mankind could progress despite the existence of both predators and useless M&S: there were always people who could handle them. They are remembered as heroes, great leaders and geniuses, but I don't think they did anything extraordinary. They simply learned something that everyone should, but most doesn't: how to handle dangerous or useless people. MMOs would be a great place to learn these skills if only the evil ones are let to do pixel-evil. Unfortunately various "save the children from frustration" softhearts prevent us facing pixel evil, dooming some of us to get their first experience about evil in a really dangerous situation.

22 comments:

A group of players wanted retribution for an act of E1's. That group achieved their retribution. In game, or meta game, either solution works.

I personally joined the 'anti E1' chorus upon learning of the interaction with the wife; and considered such inappropriate for players. If you will, tagging the out of game player for retaliation, and not just the in game pilot.

@Foo It was not 'A group of players', bonus room and double isk scam existed fo years, and CCP just ignored them. It was one player, abusing first his position as SCM member, then as "popular blogger" to make CCP ban other player whom he does not like. Period.And Jesters arguments, they just ... strange "will you talk to your mother about it?" WTF??? there is billion things i wont talk to my mother, Tarantino's "Inglorious Bastards" for example, whats that supposed to mean?

Kana: That a behavior existed for years and CCP ignored them isn't an argument. There is evidence that these bonus room ... things ... escalated in their horribleness as time went on. Further, community attitudes to something are not set in stone. Something that a community sees as acceptable now may be unacceptable in the future.

There was no "abuse" on the part of ripard... no matter how long a bow you wish to draw.

In RL you don't enjoy the same anonimity of the Internet, so the consequences of your behaviour can get much more difficult to ignore. Also you can actually get a "real life ban" if your behaviour crosses into mobbing/bullying territory.

Protection from Harassment Act 1997Section 1;(1)A person must not pursue a course of conduct—

(a)which amounts to harassment of another, and

(b)which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other.

(2)For the purposes of this section, the person whose course of conduct is in question ought to know that it amounts to harassment of another if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other.

(3)Subsection (1) does not apply to a course of conduct if the person who pursued it shows—

(a)that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime,

(b)that it was pursued under any enactment or rule of law or to comply with any condition or requirement imposed by any person under any enactment, or

(c)that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable.

UK law. Therefore if ER1 or his victim are UK residents a criminal offence has occurred.If any person of organisation aids or abets a criminal offence that person or organisation is also guilty of the same offence.Thus if ER1 or the victim are in the UK then potentially CCP is guilty of an offence in the UK and can also be prosecuted, as can anyone in the room with ER1.http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/40/section/1

Iceland has a penal code which was drafted in 1940, but seems to get ammended.It would appear that what ER1 may have done with his cronies may fall foul of one of the prohibited articles some where in the region;article 233, or 233a, 234, 235, 236, or maybe 237see;http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=190914#LinkTarget_716

Which may also be a reason CCP chose to ban ER1 since he might have committed crimes under Icelandic law. Article 22 appears to provide for punishment of anyone aiding or abetting such a criminal deed, whilst article 23 says that accessories shall not be punished if they take measures to stop the offence.

There is no such thing as 'the community' of Eve Online, at least, in the sense that it implies a right-thinking group comprising the majority of players.

There are 'communities', some of which are headed by intelligent and very vocal players who possess an agenda and great charisma.

Examples are Erotica 1, Gevlon Goblin, and James 315. Ripard Teg might be a further example.

While playing Eve, these leaders have been able to give free rein to their online personas, without serious hindrance. Outside Eve,they take advantage of the relative freedom to 'flesh-out' their characters, or even to reveal other traits or interests.

Ostracising undesirables is the behaviour of the child, who only takes such action because he or she has not reached a stage of development where other actions become available, possible.

The child becomes a teen. Censure becomes available, and some teenagers take to it with relish. This is the stage in which 'everything I do is right if I deem it so, everything you do is wrong if I deem it so'.

But the true Man, the mature and optimised Being, realises that no-one is all bad, all good. He sees within himself many undesirable traits.

It's likely that, if he deals with those, he will at least be able to attempt to deal with those of others, however opposed to his point of view they may be.

I believe Gevlon to be correct in saying that the way to deal with undesirable behaviour (since we are often thrown willy-nilly together with people we dislike) - is to reflect in a mature way on the problem and to deal with it accordingly.

Asking the teacher to punish a classmate whose behaviour offends you is borderline pre-teen stuff. Deal with him yourself.

@anonymous lawer "Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and some other lawer trashtalk"

And all EVE "community" guilty of piracy, and all Battle Field players guilty of murdersand all Counters Strike players guilty of terrorism, and all Civ players guilty of genocide and war crimes...

why don't you go and sue them?

BTW please explain me one ting, E1 victims clearly stupid and greedy persons, stupid and greedy becose they give money to complete strangers, greedy and stupid becose can't understand that they lost their assets and provide entertaiment for scammers in vain hopes to return them.Since then stupid and greedy persons become victims? Half of world classic literature making fun of them, why you protecting them now?

ArthurWellsley, your whole post there relies on E1 being guilty of harassment. In no court of law would asking someone to sing songs be considered harassment. The player was not followed or hounded, he chose to be there and choose to take the actions he did. A rational person looking at this subjectively can see this. Unfortunately the vocal parts of the community aren't rational or subjective. Many of them have been scammed and see this as a way to rid the game of a scammer and have done so. This does nothing to stop actual harassment, where players are being personally attacked then told by CCP that it's not their problem as it happened out of game. This gets rid of a single scammer, and put people in a positions where they don't know where the line is drawn, but daily people will continue to get legitimately harassed and CCP will continue to state it is not their problem.

@sasha, "deal with him yourself" is not always viable and can very well be that you need an authority's intervention (maybe not the teacher, but the police is supposed to exist for a reason). The alternative is advocating people literally taking matters in their own hands which can get pretty ugly pretty fast.

All the space-lawyering and real-life amateur lawyering misses Gevlon's point entirely. The question is: given that many people are stupid, greedy, and gullible, isn't it better that they learn how to avoid scams and so-called "bullying" in a spaceship game? E1's famous victim lost about 200m ISK.

Or as I put it: it is to be hoped that the newbie sucker will learn a very valuable lesson about his own greed and gullibility, and at a remarkably low real-world cost; and that is regardless of whether he stays or goes. EVE: educating suckers since 2004. Keep EVE Dangerous.

EVE however is not here to educate people, but to entertain them. CCP is not a learning institution, they are a business.

Of course they care if that newbie leaves due to a scam, they're not going "well, there goes another one, but we're proud to have opened up his eyes to the potential abuse he will get in the real world". Which, ironically, isn't the case either, because the abuse that E1 launched and people seem too fond defending, is not pixel-evil but RL evil.

I am reminded of your post difference between a prank and harrasement. lets be clear hear no one has drawn a line of whats acceptable and the few who have tried failed badly. If the line is public humilation then rippard is worse than E1 becacuse of his wonderful kind thoughts on KOTW's. How do we know that the person who he points out is not a fragile child who just needs love and attention? instead his KOTW push's said child into the corner and makes them hate their lives.

The line is hard to draw and I wouldn't trust anyone in eve to draw that line for me.

Gevlon does indeed have a point - one needs to learn to recognize evil and deal with it appropriately.

However, this also provides places where one can train in being evil and prepare for doing evil in real life. Much like Gevlon mentions that his gaming experience taught him stuff, so i'm sure Erotica 1 is learning a lot of fun things about how to string along other humans.

I guess the deal-breaker for me here is that i'm not comfortable completely outsourcing all dealings with the likes of Erotica 1 to various world governments (CCP taking the form of government in Eve-verse).

We should be able to deal with these people socially. Because if we rely on dealing with these people through government only than what are we going to do when they get inside the government?

@Kana - no you can do what you like inside a video game, it's when your actions step outside the video game that you come under the jurisdiction of the laws of the nation state that you and your victim, and the game provider live in. That's the issue here - something done outside EVE may have state enforced sanctions, something inside EVE likely will not.

@Provi MinerPlease see;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

that's the line for all humanity, the only issue is how to express it.ArthurWellsley

that's the line for all humanity, the only issue is how to express it.ArthurWellsley"

@Arthur: The Golden Rule is a crappy line. There are people out there who are sick and twisted, and want to be abused, tortured, or murdered. If we follow the Golden Rule literally, then that gives those people carte blanche to murder and torture. The end of your link acknowledges this, but attempts to weasel out of it by suggesting a "Platinum Rule", which is a more complicated version of the Golden Rule; but it is too long to be included in your link, you have to go to your nearest major University Library and find that rule in a philosophical journal.

In short, you have done a great job illustrating the truth of Provi Miner's point, namely: "The line is hard to draw and I wouldn't trust anyone in eve to draw that line for me."

Interesting point, but I am not an advocate of the Platinum Rule. My view on the Golden Rule is that it can be universal and cover even the nasty extremities of humanity, the issue for me is how you express the rule so as to cover those outlying individuals.

You are also correct that to have a proper discussion of the Golden Rule, and how properly to express it in a modern idiom, it is useful to have a university library to hand, so that works by Stace, Shaw, and Singer can be referred to.ArthurWellsley

In real life, if I encounter and recognize (the recognition is important - how many times do we hear a variation on "but they were such a nice person" in news reports, etc?) a predator, I have several options. I can ignore them. I can warn others about them. I can confront them directly, with or without civil or legal assistance.

If someone is directly affected by their behavior (if they fall prey to a scam or theft, whether they didn't recognize warning signs or perhaps thought their chances were better than they actually turned out, for example) they have further reactions they can take. They might be able to take legal action in a criminal court. They would probably be able to bring a civil suit against the predator. They might have to "shut up and take your lumps", true, but if they really want to, they have the freedom of action to break the law themselves and attack the predator illegally (I'm not condoning that action, but it's technically an option they have).

If a person encounters predators in EVE, they also have several options. They can ignore or flee the predator, and they can warn others about the predator. These are options no matter where they are, or what kind of predation is happening. Unlike reality, their other options become limited by how and where in-game this is happening.

(Continued from previous comment)If it happens in space, the prey has similar options to reality. They can fight back in a variety of ways both legal and illegal (as defined by game mechanics, security status, bounties, Concord, mercenary contracts, war declarations and so forth). I'm not arguing that it would or would not be successful, but the possibility exists to take in-game action against "gameplay-linked" predation.

In the case of "in-station" predators, the choice is changed. There is no in-game way to take action against them. The prey's only choice is to ignore/flee or warn others, and those are only effective in preventing a loss if the prey recognizes them in advance - if someone falls prey to a scam for any reason, their only choice is to "take their lumps" and deal with the loss. Yes, if the predator later undocks and is caught in space, all the previous actions are possible (though there might be no way to recover lost assets), but as long as the predator remains docked in station, they're sacrosanct and untouchable using any and all in-game actions. The prey's only option is to avoid the predator in advance.

Certainly, it's a valuable lesson learned. I believe that being on the losing end of an exchange, "learning lessons the hard way", is often the way things stick in people's minds (certainly I have a hard time forgetting the times I've made a fool of myself or a stupid decision, and lost something because of it), but in reality, I have freedom of action, whether that action is working within the system, accepting what happened, or pushing against the system to do what I want heedless of consequences.

In the case of mechanically de-linked predators, the only choice given is "accept what happened and don't fall for it again". The system gives us tools to block the predator and warn others, but the damage to the prey is done, and the predator's only risk is that eventually, they've eaten all the prey and have to change their tactics.

Or, the prey can work outside the mechanical system, which is almost what happened here (in this case, it was someone not directly affected, but the option is available to prey as well; part of the social fallout in this case is from the fact that someone is acting "on behalf of" the prey and/or future prey, seemingly without their permission or backing). The problem with taking action outside the system is just that: it's outside the mechanical framework, and in the realm of the unquantifiable.

TL; DR: "HTFU" is a great response when you can skill up, fit out a ship, and take the fight to the predator if you want. If there was a way to do that to predators in station, I doubt many people would have a problem with them existing. Too bad there's nothing we can do except try to avoid them.

I agree with many points made by the "keep EVE dangerous" viewpoint here.

I don't want EVE to be dumbed down or to cease to present risk no matter which bit of space you make your home.

However, for that to work, there has to be risk for everyone involved. Station-bound scammers don't face any risk. They sit there and spam local channels, scooping up what they can. They are the antithesis of the idea of risk in EVE. They never face risk.

I also agree that if all that was lost, in terms of isk, was 200M and that even a fairly new player could make that back fairly quickly should they put some effort into it. However, that's a bit of a straw man - noone (as far as I'm aware) involved in gunning for E1 claimed that the 200M isk (or any other amount) was significant. The objections to E1's behaviour have revolved around the bonus room and whether that can be validly called bullying or harassment.

My own take? Yeah - it crossed the line and it was right for CCP to wield the EULA in this case. Where that line is? Much harder to pin down and I don't expect any attempt to do so from CCP any time soon.